Bus Bench Lessons – a poem for Torah Portion Matot-Masei

And all the young girls who have no experience of intimate relations
with a man, you may keep alive for yourselves.

This was Moses speaking
Not the architects of the modern patriarchy
Not the installers of the glass ceiling

Not the pussy grabbers
But Moses, our prophet, our leader
our spokesperson of the Freedom Deliverer

And this came right after So now kill every male child,
and every woman who can lie intimately with a man
you shall kill.

We’re wandering through the desert with a
strange sense of divine entitlement.
We’re fighting enemies or destroying communities

with a righteousness we think we deserve.
I’ve seen the bus benches around Los Angeles
a place that should be a desert

with Hebrew saying love your neighbor as yourself.
Paid for by the people who take the words of Moses
as ineffable law.

This is the golden rule we should apply to
all the genders and identities and ages and colors.
I feel I’m writing poems to the choir.

But if you’re not one of the sweet singers
If you didn’t learn everything you needed to know
standing on one foot

then let the sacredness of all
stand as your commentary. Trust no-one
who says otherwise.

Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created the Poetry Super Highway (an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He’s authored 23 collections of poetry, including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion“, “I’m a Jew, Are You” (Jewish themed poems) and “Feeding Holy Cats” (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently “Hunka Hunka Howdee!” (Poems written in Memphis, Nashville, and Louisville – Ain’t Got No Press, May 2019) and edited the anthologies “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah”, and “The Night Goes on All Night.” He writes the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He’s widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.